Traditions

Today is Oiche Fhéile Bhríde – St Brigid’s Eve. The Saint’s festival – tomorrow – marks the beginning of Spring: we will feel the lengthening of the days, and we have to be alert for so many portents.

Firstly – Hedgehogs. Watch out for your Hedgehogs: to see one is a good weather sign, for on Brigid’s Eve the Hedgehog comes out of the hole in which he has spent the winter, eyes up the weather and, if he likes the look of it, starts his foraging. If he goes straight back in again, then you’ll know that the storms will continue! This is according to Kevin Danaher, a frequent contributor on our seasonal folklore. The wind direction on the eve of the festival ‘…betokens the prevailing wind during the coming year; the festival day should show signs of improving weather, although an exceptionally fine day is regarded as an omen of poor weather to come…’

For those of us who live by the sea we have to be alert for Rabharta na Féile Bríde, the spring tide nearest to St Brigid’s day, as it is said to be the most significant one of the year – that’s when the difference between high and low tide is the greatest. Danaher, The Year in Ireland, Mercier Press 1972, notes: ‘…The people were quick to take the opportunity of cutting and gathering seaweed to fertilize the crops and of collecting shellfish and other shore produce. In a few places a live shellfish, such as a limpet or a periwinkle, was placed at each of the four corners of the house, to bring fishing luck and ensure plentiful shore gathering…’ But don’t forget that it’s not until Good Friday that you harvest the Mussels.

All the photographs in this post are from the collection of Tomás Ó Muircheartaigh, who documented life in rural Ireland between the 1930s and the 1950s – an invaluable pictorial record of the times

This is the day to make – and eat – your bairin-breac: ‘…On St Brigid’s Eve every farmer’s wife in Ireland makes a cake, the neighbours are invited, the madder of ale and the pipe go round, and the evening concludes with mirth and festivity…’ (Danaher). I’m holding out hopes that Finola will oblige and get out her delicious barm-brack recipe. Of course, the mirth and festivity will follow as she soaks the fruit in whisky! The Saint travels around the countryside on the eve of her festival, bestowing her blessing on the people and their livestock. We must be sure to leave out for her a piece of our cake: ‘…Often a sheaf of corn was put beside the cake, as refreshment for the Saint’s favourite white cow which accompanied her on her rounds. Others laid a bundle of straw or fresh rushes on the threshold, on which the Saint might kneel to bless the house…’ (Danaher).

Tonight we will hang a piece of red ribbon outside our door: ‘…One traditional story says that St Brigid wove the first cloth in Ireland and worked into it white healing threads which were said to have kept their healing power for centuries. In many places in Ireland it was customary to put a piece of silk ribbon, red being the preferred colour, outside the house on the Eve of St Brigid’s Day, much in the same way as articles of clothing or cloth left out on the saint’s eve would be endowed with St Brigid’s blessing when they became known as the Brat Bhríde (Brigid’s cloak). It was believed that St Brigid, when travelling around the country on the Eve of her Day, would see and touch the ribbon, so endowing it with her blessing and conferring on it some of her healing power. After this it was referred to as the ribín Bhríde…’ from Brigid: Goddess, Druidess and Saint Brian Wright, The History Press 2009. This reminds me very much of another saint – Gobnait – who also has a February festival. It’s going to be a busy month! To start it off it’s essential that we make our bogha Brídhe –St Brigid’s Cross.

My eye was taken by an article in the Irish Times this week which stated that the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Pope have agreed to work towards a fixed date for Easter. Currently, that festival can occur anywhere between 22 March and 25 April – this year it will be an early one: Easter Sunday will be on 27 March. This has meant that, in Ireland, the Easter school holiday will last for three weeks, from St Patrick’s day (17 March – and always a day off school) until 4 April. Evidently the church leaders believe that a fixed date for all Christians around the world to celebrate Easter would be logical and practical. So much for logic – what about history and tradition?

It’s all about the sun and the moon, and the Vernal Equinox. That’s the point in the first half of the year when day and night are of exactly equal length. We are used to thinking of the equinox occurring on 21 March but this won’t happen again until the 22nd century! From now until 2044 the equinox will be on 20 March, then on the nineteenth. This is in part because our Gregorian calendar is inaccurate, but also because the Earth’s axial precession is gradually changing. In 325 the Council of Nicaea established that Easter would be held on the first Sunday after the first full moon occurring on or after the Vernal Equinox, but that was taken to be 21 March. You can begin to see the complications…

As you might expect, Ireland has had a lot to say about all this. The early church here, established by Saint Patrick, didn’t necessarily agree with the Roman church over certain issues, including the date of Easter. Matters came to a head in 664 when a synod was convened in Whitby, Yorkshire attended by delegates from the Ionian tradition and the Roman tradition. The Ionians were led by the Irish Saint Colmán, Bishop of Lindisfarne. They supported the older traditions, but the debate was won by the Romans and Saint Colmán resigned his post and returned to Ireland, where he founded abbeys in Inishbofin and Mayo and – presumably – continued to celebrate Easter in the ‘old way’.

The situation today is still confused. While Roman Catholic and Protestant churches use the ‘Alexandrine rules’, agreed in the 7th century and adapted when the Gregorian calendar was introduced (1582), Orthodox churches generally follow a method based on the earlier Julian calendar but, in fact, there are different systems used by the many different branches of Orthodoxy around the world so the Easter festival in any year may be celebrated on varying dates in divergent places.

Let’s look at tradition, especially in Ireland. Although the churches here did eventually conform to the Roman calculations, there was always some dissent. Folklore tells us that the monks on the Skelligs – isolated rocks off the Kerry coast which housed a monastery back in medieval times – followed a calendar which was several days behind the rest of the country – this sounds as though they were still basing themselves on the Julian system. This was useful, however, if you missed out on getting married before the beginning of Lent (you couldn’t marry during Lent): the period we are in now – between Little Christmas (6 January) and the beginning of Lent – was in Ireland always the most popular time for weddings. ‘Going to the Skelligs’ was a joking expression used unkindly against confirmed bachelors and spinsters.

In much of the south-west of Munster there is a vague tradition that the festival of Easter was celebrated a week later on the island sanctuary of Sceilg Mhichil than on the mainland. Whether this tradition is a distant echo of the ancient controversy on the date of Easter is a matter of speculation, but it did give the occasion of another form of disapproval of the unmarried. These had lost their chance of marrying this year on the mainland, but they could still be married on the Skellig, and steps must be taken to send them there… All over County Kerry, in parts of west County Limerick, in much of County Cork, especially along the coast, and in west County Waterford the negligent were greeted, in the first days of Lent, with a barrage of chaff and banter. ‘You’re off to the Rock, I suppose?’ ‘Don’t miss the boat!’ ‘Is it Mary or Katie you’re taking on the excursion’ etc etc. The victims had to grin and bear it… In many places the custom was carried further, and local poets were encouraged to compose verses on the occasion, verses which told of a grand sea excursion to the Skelligs, praised the splendid vessel which would take the party there and gave a long list of the participants, linking together the names of the bachelors and old maids as incongruously as possible. These verses – most of them mere doggerel – were written out and circulated about the parish so that all might enjoy them, and were sung to popular airs, often in the hearing of those lampooned in them… The custom has in more recent times taken the form of large posters, giving details of the ‘Grand Excursion’ with a list of the couples taking part in it. These notices were hung in prominent positions on the first Sunday of Lent, where they might be read by all on their way to church… In south-east County Cork the Skellig joke appeared in its most extreme form. Here bands of young men went about on Shrove Tuesday evening, and if some inveterate bachelor ventured out and fell into their hands he was bound with ropes and had his head ducked under a pump or in a well; this drenching was called ‘going to the Skelligs’

The Skelligs have been in the news recently, as the setting for a scene in the new Star Wars film: The Force Awakens. Filming on the historic site provoked considerable debate and discontent among archaeologists and conservationists. Despite our own reservations, Finola and I went to watch the film in Vancouver and – although we had to wait until the very end (the Skelligs appear only in the last scene) – we were delighted to see one of the West of Ireland’s most magnificent seascapes on the big screen – and in 3D!

It was the early 1960s and I was sitting in class in my convent school while Mother Francisca explained the purpose of our education and gave us a glimpse of our futures. “What we want for you, girls,” she said, “is to be Good Wives or Nuns.” This week, I landed back in that classroom with a bang. Did I visit my old school? No – I strayed into a time warp. In doing so I rediscovered part of my heritage I had almost forgotten and I met a brilliant young scholar who helped me access those dim memories again.

All Saints, Drimoleague – 1950s modernist architecture

All Saints Catholic Church in Drimoleague is one of the most extraordinary buildings in West Cork. First of all, it’s a fine example of mid-century modern architecture (and there aren’t a lot of those in West Cork) and an engineering triumph. Built in the 1950s of concrete and limestone, its cavernous interior has no need for pillars: nothing intrudes between worshippers and altar. It’s like stepping into an enormous, curiously bright, almost empty box. Secondly, it has extraordinary artwork in the form of a giant mural behind the altar and a panel of stained glass windows above the balcony on the south wall. It was the stained glass that stopped me in my tracks.

All Saints, the interior

The glass is laid out in a series of frames that takes the viewer from birth to death – no, beyond death, to heaven. The church was built in the 1950s and each frame represents the values of rural Catholic Ireland of that time. In a strange way it reminded me of a High Cross, in that the illustrations that we see on High Crosses were meant to tell a story – a biblical one in that case – and to instruct the viewer in the tenets of the religion. The purpose of this wall of glass was also educational – to provide a primer to mass-goers on the aspirations and actions that should guide their lives.

My parents, imbued with the message that the family that prays together stays together, developed an intermittent enthusiasm for saying the rosary. We would gather in the kitchen after dinner, each with our beads, and kneeling on the hard tiles we would tell off the Sorrowful or the Glorious Mysteries. The second frame shows just such a family, and I particularly love the toys on the floor and the statue of Mary on the mantlepiece. There’s a grandmother and a baby in a cot, and a little girl being inducted into the Mysteries by her older sister.

The Family that prays together…

Mantlepiece

The next frame shows First Communion, with the girls in miniature bride outfits (as they are to this day) and the boys in their Communion suits with the short trousers and knee socks that all boys wore at that time. Since my godson in Dublin is about to make his First Communion I have been hearing about the process and I understand that apart from the length of the boy’s trousers not a lot has changed in 60 years.

First Communion

The one that brought me back to Mother Francisca shows earnest young men and women gazing at a directional sign which shows them their choices – marriage or the religious life. That was it! To hammer home the point the top of the panel shows a wedding, a priest and a nun. I’m casting my mind over the group of girls I went to school with – we didn’t produce any nuns and while most of us married I can’t think of a single one who hasn’t worked – we count among us an ambassador, teachers and principals, a town planner, an artist, a college dean, office administrators, a medical doctor, an international expert on child protection, a veterinary nurse, a parliamentary reporter, a lawyer…the list goes on. But none of this was discussed at school: we had no career guidance, no aptitude tests, no encouragement of any kind to think of ourselves as people who would work for a living. What’s curious is that we developed those careers in the complete absence of any kind of conscious preparation for them at the secondary school level.

Choices

Choices made

The sixth frame might be my favourite. It’s the ‘work, rest and play’ lesson. At the bottom of the frame a happy family sits around the tea table. Above them men work on the fields and on top those men are playing Gaelic football while their wives sit on a bench on the sidelines and chat to each other. Men were to head the family, work and play hard, and women were to provide the supportive role. I doubt if anyone foresaw when that glass was designed in the 1950s that in the next century (only a few days ago in fact) two Irish rugby squads – the men AND the women – would bring home the Six Nations Cup for Ireland.

Teatime

Work and play

The last three frames deal with end of life, including Last Rights, death, and reception into heaven – the reward for living the exemplary life presented in the stained glass wall.

Last Rites

If you grew up like I did in 1950s Ireland, or if you are interested in the art and architecture or the social history of this period, the Church of All Saints in Drimoleague tells a fascinating story. There is little available online about this church – I couldn’t even find out who designed the windows. But my research revealed that one other person was as struck as I was by this church, although in a more scholarly way. Richard James Butler is a gifted young art historian from Bantry who is completing doctoral studies at the University of Cambridge. We were lucky to hear him speak at the Bantry Historical Society recently on the subject of the courthouses of West Cork – a topic we had no idea could be as interesting until we heard his erudite and engaging presentation. He has written a paper, All Saints, Drimoleague, and Catholic visual culture under Bishop Cornelius Lucey in Cork, 1952-9, which will be published in the next issue of the Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society. I’ve had a sneak peak, thanks to Richard’s generosity in sharing his findings with a fellow enthusiast. His paper deals with the Catholic ethos within which that era of church construction operated, with the role of the local community in commissioning such an unusual edifice, with the enormous mural, and with the windows. It was only after communicating with Richard that I learned that the windows were the work of the Harry Clarke Studios* and how unusual they were for their day in not being concerned solely with images of saints, the life of Christ, or Mary. If you get a chance to read his paper when it’s published, do so – it may make you take a fresh look at the legacies of 1950s Ireland by which we are still surrounded.

Devotion in 1950s West Cork

* For a discussion of the difference between Harry Clarke windows and Harry Clarke Studio windows, see this post.

There’s so much going on here in West Cork. You could be out every night if you wanted to be, and participating in as many community events as there are hours in the day. How do we keep up with it all? Easy – The Southern Star. It comes out every Thursday, and features a pull out Community section that details all the news from the towns and villages around West Cork. Births, baptisms, deaths, marriages and engagements are announced, and be-gowned university graduates are pictured with smiling parents.

Recent funeral in Skibbereen

Competitions are legion – sometimes talent-based, and sometimes sporting, such as the Clonakilty Blackpudding Car Rally. But rural and farming pursuits such as ploughing competitions or agricultural conferences remind us that we are living in a part of the world that makes it living off the land. Recently a tillage seminar attracted large crowds in Bandon, while another one on calf-rearing had over 300 attendees in Timoleague. Cheval rides are often pictured – horse treks for charity from town to town or across golden beaches. A farmer recently put out an appeal for a missing cow:

The animal made good its escape from a farm in Jagoe’s Mills, Belgooly, on Friday, January 17th. The animal may be suffering from memory loss as it was last seen at the racecourse in Farrangalway, before evading capture and taking to the countryside in the Dunderrow area. This is an extremely prized animal.

The farming community has been up in arms recently over changes to the system of government grants known as “Single Farm Payments” and there have been huge turnouts at meetings, protests and rallies.

Divine Intervention at Myross

The ebb and flow of village life is chronicled in the Star’s Community pages. ICA (Irish Countrywomen’s Association) meetings are announced and later described. Local businesses close and the village say farewell to a pair of much-loved publicans. Community members gather to clean up a graveyard (…stone walls emerged and tombs reappeared after years of being buried in undergrowth. The little Huguenot chapel was cleared of saplings and briars…) or celebrate the opening of a new playground, to help neighbours affected by the recent awful storms or to hold a St Brigid’s Cross making session in the senior’s housing complex. West Cork people are upset about fluoride in their water and enthusiastic about the Men’s Shed Movement.

Getting news of cultural events

Reading the Southern Star is the only way to find out where Road Bowling events are taking place, or horse races. We comb through it looking for the upcoming meetings of the various Historical Societies, the concerts (from orchestral to traditional), the plays by the local drama groups (this weekend, Sam Shepard’s Buried Child in Schull), and the upcoming festivals. Ballydehob will hold its annual St. Patrick’s Day parade on March 17 (a national holiday here) and the theme this year is to recreate the 1914 Postal Directory of the village. We are witnessing the establishment here of an new national tourism initiative, the Wild Atlantic Way, and local communities are being asked to brainstorm how to get involved.

Daisy contemplates her strategy

I will finish with one of my favourite recent items:

A Cowpat Challenge takes place at Kilmurry National School on Sunday, February 23rd. at 11am. Daisy the cow is coming to the grassy area in the playground which will be marked out into numbered squares. Whoever owns the square that Daisy decided to deposit the first cow pat into, wins a whopping €1,000.

We are posting early this week as we leave for a trip to Ireland’s west coast tomorrow. We still have no telephone or internet so this is coming to you through the kindness of neighbours who have given us access to their WiFi. Next post in two weeks – spring will have arrived by then. Right?

Our first Christmas at Nead an Iolair and it’s been everything we could have wished for. The day itself was bright and sunny. We threw the French doors wide open and exchanged our gifts in the sunshine. It’s a good job we enjoyed it while we could, as the wild weather set in on St Stephen’s Day (Boxing Day outside Ireland).

Robert’s gifts: is there a theme developing here?

Of course, we had to have the ceremonial first cut of each of our Christmas cakes. Readers will remember that I made Monica Sheridan’s recipe while Robert made Delia Smith’s. The verdict? Mine was way better! (This is MY post.)

The avant garde and the traditional approach

Our new stoves were installed just in time for Christmas. This kind of supplemental heating is essential for the winter months in West Cork, where fuel is very expensive. Together with our decorations, newly purchased from the Christmas markets and hung on twigs culled from nearby hedgerows, they created a cosy and seasonal ambience in the house. Also perfect for a house-warming party, which we are finally hosting this weekend.

Ready for the house-warming party!

Now so, at the end of 2013, we have to say that it’s been a grand year, like. And to our readers, Bliain nua faoi mhaise agus shona dhaoibh – a Prosperous and Happy New Year to you all.

From Roaringwater Bay to all our friends and readers – a Happy New Year!

At the recent Autumn Fair (known as the Thrashing) in Ballydehob, Robert and I got a chance to take a turn at the butter churn and to watch the magical transformation of milk into butter and buttermilk.

Pouring off the buttermilk

It’s ready!

Washing, salting, shaping

To reward us for all that labour (turning that handle was so hard), we had a butter feast – homemade soda bread made using the buttermilk, with homemade butter and homemade jam. There are lots of good Irish soda bread recipes on the internet: here’s the one I used. And yes, you can get buttermilk in North America – take a really good look on the milk shelves and you’ll see it lurking in a corner near the cream.

Homemade soda bread by the fire

Homemade jam – this is a fabulous five minute jam recipe I found from a link on a friend’s Facebook page and adapted slightly. Mine is blackberry (bumper crop this year!) but you could use any berry you want.

1 cup blackberries

1 tbsp honey

1 tbsp warm water

1 tbsp chia seeds

Blend (in a blender) and pour into something (yogurt container? Glass?). Put in fridge for an hour. Hey presto – delicious jam! The chia seeds jellify and that’s what binds the jam. You have to keep this jam in the fridge and eat it within a couple of weeks, since it’s not cooked. It will freeze well. I was introduced to chia years ago by my friend Christi from El Salvador. It’s available in supermarkets and health food stores.